2002 - University of Washington Bone and Joint Sources

Moving Toward Knowledge Building Communities in Health
Information Website Design
TRACEY WAGNER, JENNIFER TURNS, KRISTEN SHUYLER, AND AARON LOUIE
The Arthritis Source is a webbased
information resource
created to help self-motivated,
geographically dispersed learners gain
access to information about arthritis
(www.orthop.washington.edu/
arthritis). It was developed to support
the needs of everyone who interacts
with it: the users, the site managers, and
the content creators. For the past two
years, the Program for Educational
Transformation Through Technology
(PETTT) and the UW Department of
Orthopaedics and Sports Medicine
have used a science of learning
framework to develop an analysis
process and content creation system
that meets the needs of both learners
and teachers using the Arthritis Source.
Our redesign of the Arthritis Source
has been guided by both the current
research on medical information
websites and by our own specific
concerns. A variety of current studies
on the roles and effectiveness of medical
websites have discussed some common
shortcomings and related design
decisions (e.g., Berland et al., 2001). In
our research, we have moved away from
describing the community of users and
toward focusing on the users’ current
knowledge and their goals in visiting
the site. In this work we have attempted
to address some of the known problems
and also create a systematic solution to
issues of content maintenance and site
development that meets users’
changing needs. We are attempting to
support the subject matter experts in
creating content that is appropriate for
the users. Most importantly, we wanted
to help patients find answers to
questions concerning their conditions.
We are working on a system of site
architecture and content development
that can be driven explicitly by both our
understanding of users’ information
needs and by users’ interactions with
the site over time. As people use the site,
they will collaborate with the content
authors to create an information
resource that serves users’ purposes and
will change with their needs.
This redesign transforms the
Arthritis Source from its original state
as a static, encyclopedic object into a
community of inquiry and practice in
which users learn from each other’s
questions and shape the growth of the
knowledge base. In this effort, the
designers, content authors, and users of
the website each learn from the others.
Redesigning to support knowledge
building
The Arthritis Source has been a
successful website since its inception
about 1995. It was getting thousands
of hits per day and users were
submitting unsolicited compliments
through emails. The site covered
Figure 1: Research and design work on the Arthritis Source has included many elements. The timeline
above shows an approximate timeline of the work done on the site to date.
approximately 100 topics related to
arthritis and incorporated a variety of
media.
Despite this success, we knew we
wanted to make changes to the Arthritis
Source – to update the information, to
address the types of concerns emerging
from studies of such informational
websites, and to make the information
more learner-centered. To address
these issues, we wanted a solution that
would be scalable (so we can continue
to expand the website) and enhancable
(so we can make changes with
reasonable levels of effort). We also
recognized quickly that the information
designers, content authors, and users
needed to come together to collaborate
on the most effective site.
In making our changes, we have
adopted a knowledge building
community perspective. In such a
community, a variety of people
contribute to the accumulation of
knowledge, different people can
contribute in different ways, the
knowledge base builds up over time,
and there are standards of quality for
what belongs in the knowledge base.
The members of the community learn
from each other by being exposed to
both the products and processes of the
knowledge creation activities, which
benefits them all. We are using this
perspective as a way of thinking about
how the users of the Arthritis Source will
interact with the site, with the content
authors, with the designers, and with
each other.
Diverse learners, but shared needs
Our earliest work with the Arthritis
Source consisted of various efforts to
“know thy learner” so that we could
create a site that was more learnercentered
(Turns and Wagner, 2002). We
used a variety of methods to learn who
was visiting the website and what they
were doing during their visits. One of
our most comprehensive activities has
been our use of an online survey in
which users of the site provide us with
information about themselves and their
visit (Turns and Liu, 2000). Based on
survey results, personal interviews, and
emailed comments, we know that our
50 2002 ORTHOPAEDIC RESEARCH REPORT